Christmas Eve with the Super-Heroes

Remember that time that Ferro Lad and I shared a Christmas story of explosions, cloning, and death? Well, in an effort to keep Ferro Lad from continuously asking if we can open the Christmas presents early, I've decided to distract him, with a story of Christmas.





As I was saying, a story of Christmas, starring our friends Superman and, God help us all, Lois Lane. In a rare, shocking twist, Lois actually isn't the worst person in the story.







As I was saying, our story comes from the pages of DC Comics' "Christmas with the Super-Heroes", published in late 1974 but cover dated early 1975:



A giant, tabloid-sized comic, it contains charming holiday moments like a man trying to strangle Batman with Christmas decorations:



and Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman's younger sister, beating up some thugs in a junkyard while dressed as Sexy Santa:



because that's what Christmas is all about. It also contains our story:



Guessed who the most awful person in the story is yet?

I'll give you a hint: it's not Lois, and it's not Santa.

Our story opens at a tiny, sad train station in Christmastown, USA:



Yes, in keeping with the tone set in the rest of the book, we start with a broken family and a shattered tradition handed down through generations. Things are also about to get worse, as Lois and Clark discover on the way to Christmastown's annual holiday festival:





Not only is Christmastown's Santa missing, but they're flooded.

Merry Christmas.

Fortunately Clark Kent is, of course, Superman. Diverting Lois to cover the floods while he covers the holiday festival, Superman flies off to find the mayor of Christmastown and reassure him:



I'm as confused as the mayor. Tell us, Superman, how will the flooding make this the best Christmas ever? Is it because you're going to use your super powers to fix the floods and reverse hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage? That's why you start cutting down trees, right? To build a super-dam or something?





Wait, what?





Superman isn't going to do anything to stop the floods. Instead, he's going to build a party barge to float over the ruined livelihoods of the citizens of Christmastown as they struggle to shore up the levees that will prevent things from getting even worse. And he's going to make toys while he does it. Because that's the best use of his many awesome super powers.

A party barge.

If only there were some way he could add to this floating ark of human misery, some final touch that would make it even more awful?



Oh, right. We can force the old guy with the missing grandson to ride on it and pretend to be Santa.

Superman is a horrible person.

Meanwhile, Lois is, shockingly enough, actually trying to help someone who isn't her or named after her:



She wants to help that poor man with amnesia that she found in the water.



Or she wants to put him to work hefting sandbags. Seriously, Lois? If Superman wasn't busy playing a fiddling Nero over the drowned homes of Christmastown you'd be the worst person in this story, for making a man with neurological trauma and a head injury perform physical labor in wet, freezing conditions.



True. It's not like Superman's doing anything to stop the flooding, and morale at the levees seems pretty bad:



Worst Christmas ever. Too bad there's no superhero around to fix things, right? Wait, what's that coming in from upstream?



Yes, that's right, it's Superman's "Let Them Eat Cake While the Insurance Companies Deny Their Flood Damage Claims" party barge, complete with sad Santa:



Lois drags her amnesiac laborer over for a closer look, in pursuit of a better story, and somehow her relentless pursuit of a Pulitzer leads to a Christmas miracle:





All that's left now is for Superman to redeem himself by taking care of the flooding, right? Look, there he goes, up into the sky:







I'm not sure how things worked on Krypton, but here on Earth dropping a blizzard on top of heavy flooding isn't really a perfect Christmas.

Great job being a horrible person, Superman.



So, there you have it. A story of family, Christmas, and natural disaster that Lois didn't cause.

Merry Christmas, from all of us.

Twinkies Saved the World

Thanks for the update, Lois.

As you may or may not have heard, Hostess has gone out of business, spelling the temporary end of Twinkies, Hostess Fruit Pies, Wonder Bread, and a bunch of other stuff that most people probably don't buy in a week but are now suddenly, if Facebook is to be believed, realizing that they can't live without. I think this photo sums up most of what I've read:



Most of my friends have reacted in the following ways:

1) "Oh, that's sad. Oh well."

2) "ANOTHER PIECE OF MY CHILDHOOD IS DEAD! WHY, GOD? WHYYYYYYYY?"

3) "One less thing to make children fat. Good riddance."

I'm not particularly broken up about the whole thing. I do think it's a little sad that I will possibly never again have a fried Twinkie:



but then I remember that, despite my love of fair food, fried food, and snack food, I've only ever had a fried Twinkie once, and didn't finish it. The filling in the center coagulated and got so sweet that I had to stop halfway through. It was so sugary that I felt like I might vomit, but now I feel kind of bad that people might never have the chance to violently sicken themselves on deep fried snack food the way that I did.

I feel like America has lost something.

Not only that, but I'm worried about the disastrous consequences that the loss of Hostess snack cakes can have on our society.

How will Batgirl foil well-dressed jewel thieves?



How will Wonder Woman save astronauts from a fiery death?



And why aren't those fruit pies burning up on re-entry? What the hell are they made out of, and why did we cover the space shuttle in heat resistant tiles when we could have just covered it in apple pies instead?

Hostess snack cakes helped Captain Marvel prevent an alien invasion:



helped Spider-Man find love:



and once even saved Thor from a family of rampaging hillbillies:



which, I've heard, could be the plot of the upcoming "Thor II".

Hostess snack cakes helped Hawkman quell a riot:



helped Green Arrow rescue some endangered schoolchildren:



helped Captain America rescue Nick Fury:



and helped Aquaman clean up a beach and save the suntan lotion and bikini industries:



Hostess snack cakes are part of the fabric of America, one of our many icons, and once they even helped Batman save our American icons:



from the Pigeon Person, who was stealing all of our statues, possibly to poop on. (Don't look at me like that. When have you seen a pigeon do anything with a statue BESIDES poop on it?)

So, where does this leave us? What will become of us in this new, harsh, Twinkie-free world?





We'll be fine. Calm down, people, and for the love of God, stop buying Twinkies for $40 a box on e-bay. Hostess will be auctioned off, someone will buy the brands, and you'll see Twinkies and Ding Dongs and Wonderbread again.

In the meantime, try to avoid the impending crime wave.

Halloween Horror: Silver Age DC Strikes Again

In honor of last night's holiday, Halloween, I thought I would dig out some spooky comics and share a tale of nightmarish terror as only Silver Age DC Comics could deliver them, a disturbing blend of horror and wacky insanity marketed to children.

I'll let Ferro Lad and Invisible Kid take it from here:









Of course it is. This is, after all, a story of terror and insanity.







Our story opens with Lana Lang's dream come true:



Lois is dead. And sure, Lana looks sort of sad about it as she stands by Lois' flaming funeral bier on Rajah Satdev's lush estate, but I bet there was a scene they didn't show where Lana knelt by the corpse like Heather Duke in "Heathers" at Heather Chandler's funeral, thinking, "I prayed for the death of Lois Lane many times, and I felt bad every time I did it, but I kept doing it anyway. Now I know that you understood. Amen and hallelujah!"

But wait, it gets better:



Not only is Lois dead, but Superman killed her. Did I mention that this story takes place on Lana's birthday? I'm not kidding. It says so on page 7.

Superman barely acknowledges Lana, because he's deranged with grief and guilty remorse. So much grief and guilty remorse, in fact, that he starts talking to Lois' corpse, and then...





Then comes the necrophilia. Happy Halloween, everybody!

No, actually, we're spared the necrophilia. Instead, Superman flies off in another fit of grief, leaving Lana alone to wonder how long the mourning period should be before she calls Superman for a date. While she's thinking, Rajah Satdev, the owner of the estate, appears:



He waves a hand and says some magic words, and Lana's day gets even worse:



Lois is married to Superman, and she's alive again, but she's hideously disfigured. I guess Lana sees that as enough of a silver lining to ask what's going on, and Lois explains that this all started when the Daily Planet sent her to cover the Metropolis Exotic Animal Show:



Intrigued, Lois hops in the Rajah's limo for an interview, but something may or may not be amiss:





The collapsing skyscraper turns out to be a huge scoop for Lois, but even though she's the kind of woman who accidentally breaks cursed mirrors and is regularly abducted by aliens on a daily basis Lois never stops to think, "Hey, did I actually just sell my soul to Satan?"

There is something odd about that Rajah, though:





He also spends a lot of time drinking a secret elixir that Lois is gravely forbidden to taste, which is pretty much the same as handing Lois the bottle and screaming, "Chug!"

As soon as he falls asleep:



But it's not from the Fountain of Youth, and instead burns Lois' mouth. Wondering how the Rajah could possibly drink it, Lois grabs his turban:





Lois and the Rajah immediately start fighting about her betraying his trust and him not being up-front with her about maybe being Satan, attracting the attention of Superman, who happens to be carrying Lana, because it's her birthday. When Superman tries to intervene, though, disaster strikes:



Which brings us back to where we left off before Lois' multi-page flashback:



The Rajah's tigers attack Lana, who tries to fight them off with one of the torches around the bier. Lana's wild flailing with the torch accidentally lights the bier on fire, and Lois and the Rajah stand unharmed in the flames as nearby villagers cower in fear. (They might also be cowering because the tigers that attacked Lana, never mentioned again in the story, flee the flames by running straight toward the village.) In the middle of all of this furor, it suddenly dawns on Lois that hey, she's a demon now.



The Rajah spirits the unconscious Lois home, where it turns out that he's not the devil after all:



His people are aliens who just happen to look like Satan, like the aliens in Childhood's End.

Resigning herself to life on Satdev's world, Lois makes plans to marry him:



but harbors a secret in her heart:



When the big day finally comes, trouble rears its head yet again:



Lois never took off the ring that Superman gave her when she was dead and he was deranged with grief.





Lois realizes that she can't marry a man she doesn't love as much as she loves the man who accidentally killed her and continuously strings her along because he has a second girl on the side, and begs Satdev to send her home:







Happy Halloween, everybody.